STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. Indonesia is the third most “data hacking” country, after Russia and France. The recent PDN cyberattack was severe, with 210 central and regional agencies affected, per Kominfo, including Military Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS) and National Police’s Indonesian Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (Inafis). Global losses from cybercrime are estimated at a cost of $9.2 trillion.
In a rare admission, Indonesian authorities revealed that last week’s catastrophic collapse of the country’s immigration system was caused by hackers using new ransomware to attack a critical data centre.
The latest cyberattack, which crippled immigration services for days, has sparked calls for the government to be held accountable, with one expert questioning the safety of citizens’ personal data processed by the state.
The hackers being the attack had issued a US$8 million ransom demand to return control of the servers to the Indonesian government, but communications and informatics minister Budi Arie Setiadi vowed “we will never pay”.
A cyberattack has hit the national data center of Indonesia. Hackers demanded a ransom of $8 million, which the government refused to pay. Over 200 government agencies are affected, and some services, like immigration, are slowly resuming.
More than 40 Indonesian agencies, including the ministry overseeing immigration, were impacted by a cyber attack on Indonesia’s data centres, an official said on June 26.
The latest cyber attack, the worst that the country has experienced in recent years, disrupted immigration services and affected operations at Indonesia’s major airports for days.
Forty-four government agencies, including key ministries, were targets of the ransomware attack, said Mr Usman Kansong, an official from Indonesia’s communications ministry.
The National Police are investigating the ransomware attack on a temporary National Data Center (PDN) facility last week that crippled immigration processes and is still disrupting other public services to date, with a view to laying criminal charges against the perpetrators.
“The police will collaborate with all relevant stakeholders in handling [the cyberattack] incident and of course, we will look into” the possibility of opening a criminal investigation, spokesperson Insp. Gen. Sandi Nugroho said as quoted by Antara.
